Salted caramel

Salted caramel sort of sneaked (snuck?) up on me, rather like red velvet cake did. One minute you've never heard of it, the next it is everywhere. The other day my friend Elizabeth treated us both to salted caramel chocolates at Koko Black and I decided to try making it at home. Here's a basic caramel recipe:

125 grams butter
1 can (395 grams) sweetened condensed milk
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons golden syrup

Melt butter and sugar over a low heat. Add condensed milk and golden syrup. Stir continuously until mixture reaches soft ball stage* and is golden brown. Remove from heat. Pour mixture into a greased 15 cm square tin. Cool until set and cut into squares.

* I don't have a candy thermometer and find it fiddly testing the mixture in cold water. If you can complete a figure eight with your spoon while stirring the caramel (i.e. the start of the eight is still visible when you finish drawing it) that's also a reasonable approximation of 'soft ball stage'.

As a final step, grind some sea salt over the caramels